Comic Book
The Wallcrawler, the Webhead and the Webslinger. The King of Taunts and Snark. The Everyman Hero. The (non-sidekick) Teen Superhero, The Heart of the Marvel Universe and Company.
He's Amazing! He's Sensational! He's Spectacular!
He's just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!
Spider-Man is a Marvel Comics superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962. First appearing in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962), he is considered to be Marvel's most popular and famous superhero. He is one of — if not the — premier company mascots of Marvel Comics and is as central to them as Mickey Mouse is to Walt Disney.
Peter Parker is a shy, bookish, and constantly picked-on high school student who lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in Forest Hills, Queens due to the death of his parents. On a field trip to a science lab, he was bitten by a radioactive (and in some newer stories genetically-modified) spider, giving him amazing powers: the proportional strength of a spider, the ability to crawl on walls, a Spider-Sense to warn him of danger, as well as super-fast reflexes. A brilliant young man and budding inventor, Peter developed his own formula for an adhesive fluid that resembles and mimics a spider's web which he fires from wrist-mounted shooters, working as both a grappling tool and a projectile weapon.
Initially ebullient and overawed by his transformation from picked-on kid to superhuman, a Tragic Mistake that leads to the death of his beloved Uncle Ben permanently instills in Peter a sense of responsibility and duty to his fellow citizen. As the web-slinging, wall-crawling Spider-Man, Peter fights crime while trying to keep his identity secret from his widowed Aunt May and from the public at large, even if as a superhero from a struggling background starting out with almost entirely independent resources, he has few ways to defend himself from the misunderstandings and weak communication caused by his actions in the public eye.
Becoming a superhero on the cusp of adulthood, forced to grow up fast while barely having time to enjoy his youth, Spider-Man is the underdog superhero — scrapping to earn every inch of his triumphs, big and small, while living with the consequences of his actions, good and bad, and the ways it affects him and his loved ones for every waking day that follows.
The series was an immediate hit and quickly became Marvel's top-selling title, and in a few short years, Spider-Man became one of the most iconic heroes of all time. One of the reasons for this is because Spider-Man actually seemed like a real person, with day-to-day worries. Peter Parker was unpopular in his high school (though not without his supporting cast of friends). He and his aunt were poor, due to the death of their breadwinner. To get by, he had to sell pictures of his super-hero self to a man who only used them as a way to smear and tear down Spider-Man's reputation, in a nice inversion of the Clark Kent/Superman situation. Of course, he persevered, and with his powers, his native intelligence, and his nifty web-shooters, he went on to battle a bevy of strange supervillains. Spider-Man was in many ways Jack of All Stats of the Marvel Universe. While he wasn't the fastest, strongest, smartest, or most skilled hero there was, Spidey possessed enough of all these qualities to be able to handle a wide variety of situations and villains.
As the series continued, and despite starting nearly twenty years after both Superman and Batman, Spider-Man closed the gap between them to become just as notable and proverbial in the global consciousness. Just like them, Spider-Man has a supporting cast that is equally iconic and popular — his elderly Aunt May, his famous editor/boss J. Jonah Jameson, his school friends and rivals (Flash Thompson, Harry Osborn) and of course his Love Interest who alternately like either Peter but hate Spider-Man or vice-versa, or are otherwise too much for him or anyone to handle (Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy, Mary Jane Watson). His Rogues Gallery is also one of the most notable and famous in comics' history — the Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, Venom, Rhino, Vulture, Scorpion, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, as well as a series of popular Legacy Character and sidekicks (Miles Morales, Spider-Girl among others).
With a strongly serialized continuity during the era of EIC Stan Lee, where Marvel as a whole told stories in near real-time, Spider-Man has been lauded as a landmark in comic book characterization and narrative structure. However, as the years have gone by, Comic-Book Time was gradually introduced under his successors but still, Spider-Man's stories remained on the realistic side, a place where characters who died stayed dead, and supporting characters and fixtures from one era died in the next, new supporting characters coming in while old ones were either Put on a Bus only to return later in a new role and new form. Status-quo changes had impact and lasting consequences. Spider-Man started as a high school student, went to college, worked as an adult, had a series of girlfriends, before having long-term relationships with first Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane, Felicia Hardy, before finally reuniting with MJ and getting married to her. In The '90s, falling in line with the general trends in other Marvel titles, as well as tendencies in superhero titles from other companies, Spider-Man gradually came to be affected by retcons, characters coming Back from the Dead, Kudzu Plot and in 2007-2008, a Cosmic Retcon that reversed 20 years of real-life continuity to tell a new altered status-quo that is, in fact, a composite of elements from different parts of Spider-Man's publication history.
Spider-Man was first published in The Amazing Spider-Man, which is still considered the flagship title and center of gravity. Due to his immense popularity and fame, however, he became a tri-monthly title in The '70s and The '80s with The Spectacular Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man being published alongside Amazing three times a month. Amazing dealt with the main story and series in general, while Spectacular and Web of Spider-Man dealt with smaller stories, one-shots and provided A Day in the Limelight to supporting characters or villains. As time passed, other titles such as Peter Parker: Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man also took over as sister titles, as did some miniseries and Alternate Universe spinoffs. These titles also came to acquire significant prestige in their own right with many iconic stories first featured there, and a story-arc that takes place across all monthly titles, which first happened in 1987, became a regular occurrence in later years.
Please note that this page covers the Spider-Man comics only, for tropes pertaining to all Spider-Man media, see the franchise page. For the title character, see Spider-Man: Peter Parker.
Franchise
He's got radioactive blood!
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead!
Hey there, there goes the Spider-Man!
One of Marvel Comics' most iconic superheroes, Spider-Man is a comic book character created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962), which contained his origin story. Geeky Ordinary High-School Student Peter Parker attends a scientific demonstration and is bitten by a spider made radioactive by the experimental device, passing on the proportionate strength, speed, agility, and senses of a spider. At first, he uses his power for self-gain. After his Uncle Ben is shot by a robber that he could have stopped, Peter learns that with great power must also come great responsibility, and becomes the Amazing Spider-Man!
Like Superman and Batman, Spider-Man has proven adaptable to multiple mediums. The arachnid-powered Superhero was relatively new to the Marvel Universe when he made his TV animation debut in 1967. The show's main contribution is the Theme Song ("Spider-Man, Spider-Man/Does whatever a spider can...") which has become a popular standard, and has been covered by artists as diverse as Aerosmith, The Ramones and Michael Bublé. In the 1970s, a silent costumed actor played Spider-Man in the "Spidey Super Stories" skits on The Electric Company (1971); he only spoke in word balloons that the show's young viewers were expected to read (there was also a Lighter and Softer Recursive Adaptation comic book series in print at the same time). Subsequent Animated Series teamed Spider-Man with other heroes, such as Firestar and Iceman. This period saw the beginning of the long-running newspaper comic Spider-Man that featured Stan Lee working on it for a longer time than the regular continuity. There was also short-lived live-action series The Amazing Spider-Man (1978) (which was pulled when the network noticed that they were running an awful lot of superhero shows at the same time — Spider-Man was a contemporary of Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk (1977) and The Six Million Dollar Man). A live-action Spider-Man was also produced as a toku series in Japan, which borrowed the costume but little else, and teamed the arachnid hero with a Humongous Mecha. (This series inspired the development of the Super Sentai franchise, which in turn created the Power Rangers.) Spider-Man also appeared in video games very early and in multiple console generations holding the record for most number of video games for any superhero character, according to Guinness World Records.
Spider-Man's fortunes leaped to new heights with the worldwide success of the Spider-Man Trilogy directed by Sam Raimi which made the character so popular that he remains in demand in movies despite reboots in limited intervals. If he was popular before, he's amazing, spectacular, ultimate, and sensational for all time at this point in as many mediums, analog or digital, as you can find. His character archetype itself is now so ubiquitous that it easily lends itself to parody, satire, or deconstruction.
Has a character sheet for both his regular comics continuity and the multiple iterations he has appeared in other titles.
